Spartans win appeal against KOPA

We have won our appeal against KOPA's decision to award AC Varosi with 3 points from the re-arranged fixture that we weren't able to fulfil on the 15th of October.

The situation arose because the original fixture date was the 3rd September, however, KOPA agreed to AC Varosi's request to re-arrange it. The request was made because AC Varosi had too many players on holiday at that time.

Upon being informed of this decision, we requested that KOPA do not put the fixture on the 15th of October because some players had a pre-arranged holiday at that time and so it would not have been practical for us.

KOPA agreed to this verbally and the request was put in writing. For some reason KOPA ignored that request and put the fixture on for the 15th of October.

We were obviously unable to fulfil it, and KOPA decided it was a breach of their rules and awarded the points to AC Varosi.

Not for the first time this season we felt we were unfairly treated since we informed them over a month in advance about that specific date, there were many other dates that could have been used and the fixture was only re-arranged in the first place because of a situation at AC Varosi's end.

Therefore, we decided to make an appeal to the London FA who indicated that we had a good case as long as we could substantiate what we were claiming. We had all the evidence in writing so we pressed ahead with the appeal, which was heard on the 13th of December.

The London FA upheld our appeal and ordered KOPA to re-arrange the fixture. The main reasons being that we were not given the same treatment as AC Varosi and we had fulfilled our obligation under KOPA's constitution to inform them at least 6 days in advance should we need to re-arrange a fixture.

KOPA's reasons for the difference in treatment were that each case is judged on it individual merits and they felt our reasons were not as good as AC Varosi's.

This claim was strongly discredited by the LFA and KOPA's constitution was widely criticised.

A good job was done by Mike on two counts. He kept all records and got everything agreed with KOPA in writing. Secondly, he followed his convictions and appealed against an unjust decision against us. Well done Mike and also Neo for supporting him.

We should take this as another sign that the committee is and remains very organised and will not accept unfair treatment against the club from anyone.

We now have to concentrate again on the football, and try and take 3 points from the fixture.

Come on Spartans!